Baby Veggies

Trying to keep track of developing fruits can be difficult, especially with the squashes where a giant fruit can develop seemingly over night.

Here's a 'Waltham' butternut squash. It's already the size of my thumb, and it hasn't even flowered yet.

'Cinderella' Pumpkin

I was really surprised by how large these 'Costata Romanesco' zucchinis got prior to even flowering! 

 I've yet to let any of these 'Yellow Crookneck' squashes get much larger than this. They're so cute at this size.

This is a teeny tiny mexican sour gherkin. The plants are just covered in them!

This 'Corsican' gourd flowered really early this year, so this particular fruit should get fairly sizable by the end of the summer.

I'm assuming this is a 'Tepehuan Canteen' gourd. I've never grown it before, so I'm not entirely sure what they look like.

These tomatoey looking things are actually potato fruits. You can plant potatoes from their true seeds, but most people use what are called "seed potatoes", which are actually small tubers.

I'm pretty sure this is 'Cream of Saskatchewan' watermelon. I'm also growing 'Blacktail Mountain', which has much darker skin

Squirrely Pumpkin

My last remaining jarrahdale pumpkin finally started to rot. I put it out on the deck just to get it out of the house. The next morning I found this! At least somebody is getting a few extra miles out of this pumpkin.

Slow, But Steady Seedlings

I'm mildly concerned that my veggie seedlings aren't doing so great this year. Due to all the cold weather, I've had to confine most of the warm-weather crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc) to the basement for most of the spring. My basement maintains at around 60 degrees and my fluorescent lights aren't super bright. While these conditions are fine for a time, my seedlings really need some bright natural sunlight and warm weather to bulk up before planting time.

These tomato seedlings are enormous, but that's because I got them from a greenhouse at work. I feel like this is cheating, but who can pass up free heirloom tomatoes?

My homegrown tomato seedlings, on the other hand, are much much smaller (most only have one or two sets of true leaves at this point. Some of my other tomato seedlings (I'm too embarrassed to show them) are even smaller due to an unfortunate watering mishap that happened during my conference in Iowa (in short, some of my tomatoes got a tad bit dry, which was exacerbated by the heating mat, and I lost probably 30-50% of my tomato seedlings. Oops! That said, I think I'm almost back on track now. The youngest set of seedlings (the ones I can't show you) have two more weeks to shape up before planting time.

My first foray into favas seems to be going well. All but one seed germinated, which had some weird maggot disease upon investigation.

The basil I started a week or so ago is looking good too, although I don't know if it will be ready by farmer's market time.

This year's jarrahdale pumpkins are doing well too.

In fact, all of my squashy crops seem to be doing well...with the exception of some of the gourds, which refuse to germinate. I've been growing ornamental gourds for several years now and the germination rates are always very variable (I'm talking over a month apart for the same cultivar, from the same seed packet, grown under the same conditions).

Starting Squashy Crops

I put my first seedlings in the ground this weekend (mizuna and cilantro)! I also direct sowed snow peas, daikon radish, lettuce, spinach, and onion sets.

On top of that, I also started all my squashy-crops (pumpkin, watermelon, melon, zucchini, scallopini, cucumber, and ornamental gourd) and some fava beans and cat grass.

Mizuna

Cilantro

A variety of cucumbers, and squashes sown into peat pellets for easy transplanting.

And Then There Was One

I'm down to my last Jarrahdale pumpkin from last summer. The second-to-last finally turned mushy a few days ago. I chopped it into big chunks and threw it in the compost pile. The next morning I found little orange bits all along my driveway...apparently squirrels like raw pumpkin.

I'm completely shocked at how long these pumpkins have lasted indoors. This is especially surprising considering I've had them in sitting in the house as decoration rather than storing them in the cool basement.

Pumpkin and Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

I finally got around to using up some of the frozen pumpkin puree I made in the fall from my jarrahdale pumpkins. Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies are one of my favorite ways to use pumpkin puree (probably because it involves chocolate).

I have a feeling this recipe may vary wildly depending on the type of pumpkin you use (i.e. store-bought versus homemade, water content, amount of stringy pumpkin bits, etc). I've made it a few times and it's always slightly different, but always good too!

Pumpkin and dark chocolate chip cookies

*These are not your typical crunchy/chewy chocolate chip cookies, so don't expect them to turn out that way. These cookies are very dense and cake-like.

1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or homemade)

¾ cup sugar

½ cup vegetable oil (yes, this sounds kind of gross if you're not used to baking with oil, but this replaces the butter)

1 egg

2 cups flour

2 t baking powder

1 t cinnamon

½ t salt

1 t baking soda

1 t milk

1 cup semi sweet or dark chocolate chips (I think this is a little skimpy. I like to have a chocolate chip in every single bit, so feel free to add another ½ cup)

1 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk in a small bowl. In a large mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin puree, sugar, oil, and egg. Add the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda/milk mixture. Stir to combine. Add chocolate chips and vanilla. Spoon onto baking sheets.   Bake 10-12 minutes.

*I have found that an ice cream scoop works well for spooning out the cookies because this batter is extremely gummy and sticky.

*Although this may vary depending on the type of pumpkin you use, these cookies do not spread much when I make them, so you can put them fairly close together on the baking pan.

Making Pumpkin Puree

I got a fun new kitchen toy for my birthday this year!

This happens to be a food strainer, specifically a Roma Food Strainer and Sauce Maker. This type of gadget is often referred to as a Squeezo (although that is technically the brand name for a particular, and very very expensive, food strainer). Squeezos can be used to make spaghetti sauce, salsa, mashed potatoes, vegetable or fruit purees, jams, and juices. Since I do a lot of canning, a Squeezo is very handy.

Today I made pumpkin puree from one of my jarrahdale pumpkins. Over the course of about 24 hours, this particular pumpkin started to go soft and mushy, so I cooked it up as soon as possible.

My green jarrahdale pumpkin turned orange. Time to make puree!

I removed the seeds and stem from the pumpkin, but left the stringy pumpkin guts and skin intact. After chopping into large chunks, the pumpkin was boiled until very soft. I strained and cooled the pumpkin slightly (part of my Squeezo are made from plastic, so I don't want them to melt). Then the pumpkin chunks went into the Squeezo. I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly and easily the process went. The strainer removes all the skins and stringy bits from the pumpkin and send them out a separate chute.

Boiling pumpkin

Food strainer at work (the skins and waste comes out the chute on the left hand side of the photo).

Overall, one jarrahdale pumpkin produced almost exactly 4 pounds of puree. I froze the puree in 2 cup (1 pound) portions. I have three more of these pumpkins, so eventually I'll have 16 pounds of puree! I look forward to making a variety of pumpkin-laden baked goods and maybe some pumpkin soup.

Left: pumpkin puree; Right: pumpkin waste

One of my favorite recipes is pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. They are very moist and cakey. These cookies are especially good when made with dark chocolate chips and lots of cinnamon. More on these cookies in the future.

P.S. The standard screen that comes with the machine is supposed to be for applesauce and tomatoes, but it worked just fine for pumpkin. You can purchase extra screens designed for pumpkin, berries, salsa, and grape juice. I have a feeling that the standard screen will work for just about all of these (with the exception of grape juice of course). I'll find out next year if the standard screen is small enough to remove berry seeds.

Orange jarrahdale pumpkin?

Does anyone know why my one of my jarrahdale pumpkins is turning orange? The obvious answer is that it is ripening, but I was under the impression that these pumpkins were supposed to be green when ripe.

A couple months ago, I brought in the four jarrahdale pumpkins that my garden produced this year. They have served as a nice fall decoration and I love the gray-green color of their skin and their deeply ribbed rind. This was the first year I grew this variety of pumpkin and I'll definitely be adding it to my list again for 2011. My harvest was a little disappointing though. I planted at least six plants (I don't keep very good records), but only got four fruit. 

I've read that these pumpkins can store for a year or more if the conditions are right. Mine have kept very well the last couple months inside, but I will probably turn them into pumpkin puree fairly soon (I'll start with the orange one).

Get Jarrahdale pumpkin seeds here!